


Definitely (probably) not what it looks like

by orphan_account



Series: Luhan and his Minseok [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Cuties, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Minseok, Long-Distance Relationship, Luhan is bad at boyfriending, M/M, Misunderstandings, but so is his minseok, they aight tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 21:35:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5349353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luhan is an asshole, maybe a little bit, but he loves his Minseok.</p><p>In which Luhan makes some sketchy decisions and Minseok prefers to ignore his existence, rather than provoking confrontation. Chaos ensues and hotel rooms are broken into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Definitely (probably) not what it looks like

Luhan is an asshole, maybe a little bit, but he loves his Minseok.

It’s the combination of both that has him skipping off of set a day early, catching a redeye, and stumbling his way through the streets of Beijing to a hotel he looks far too young to afford. Of course, he’s also very pretty. Even if he wasn’t famous, he’s sure he could bat those long, fanning eyelashes, and even the harsh fluorescent lighting would be enough to catch sharp cheekbones and delicate jawline. Not a clerk in the world would’ve had a prayer against him. When he steps onto the polished marble floor of the lobby, the woman staring at him from behind the counter make his job even easier. She’s a twentysomething with a thinly veiled Exo obsession, turning a dark crimson and stuttering as soon as he nears her and flashes a smile. Luhan tells her he’s looking for one of the members, and if she could just please give him the key to Xiumin’s room, he’d be _very_ appreciative. She will, of course, tell all of her friends, and the Xiuhan rumors will flare up quite belligerently. PR will literally hunt him down and fillet him, pouty look or not, but that all will come tomorrow. Tonight, he can’t bring it in himself to care. She slips the key into his hand and he’s up the elevator in an instant, not sparing another look at the girl he’s left a mess, already typing up every detail about how he smelled into a new blog post.

Unsurprisingly, all of the boys have separate rooms. SM would like people to believe that the boys are together 24/7, having pillow fights and braiding each other’s hair and shit, but the reality is that a group of ~~twelve~~ nine adult men all crammed together like sardines, forced into cheesy, teenage costumes and singing songs about high school romance tends to translate a lot less _Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants_ and a lot more _Lord of the Flies_. To preserve some semblance of sanity, they’re usually afforded the privacy of jacking off and sleeping in peace. Well, back when Luhan and Minseok had shared rooms, it had been a bit more of a _Magic Mike_ kind of vibe, but now six months out it’s starting to feel like _Titanic,_ and, really, Luhan is not cool with being ignored. He’s a little kid, and flying across the country to sneak into his (ex?)boyfriend’s hotel room is the rich, bratty pop star equivalent of a screaming toddler in Walmart. At least, that’s what he tells himself. Minseok likes little kids; he doesn’t even roll his eyes when they cry on airplanes. Granted, Luhan probably isn’t nearly as appealing right now to the boy as a stranger’s screaming child would be. That’s a sobering thought.

Luhan knocks on the door, even though he has a key, because he is a patient and considerate kind of person. (Also, coincidentally, it decreases the chances of a call to the local police). “Who is it?” cries a hoarse voice after a moment, and Luhan feels a ball of guilt coil in his chest. It’s late, and his Minseok sounds exhausted.

Slow, uncoordinated steps sound closer and closer, and Luhan realizes that Minseok will probably check the peephole and immediately bolt the door shut or call security. Or both. It still wouldn’t be fair to startle the boy, so he slides his key into the door and waits to be spotted. Sure enough, a moment later, a single eye appears in the tiny lens.

Luhan isn’t quite sure how an eye can widen like that through a peephole; surely, that’s the kind of expression that only happens in cartoons.

Minseok immediately snaps up to close the deadbolt, but Luhan is already shoving the door open. “Just hear me out!” he yells, but Minseok is already beginning to hyperventilate and pushing back against the doorframe with every ounce of strength that he has, eyes screwing shut. Luhan panics, and probably shoves a bit too hard, because Minseok’s grip slips and the door goes careening into him, knocking the smaller boy sprawling across the room. “Shit!” Luhan cries, running to grab him and make sure he’s ok. He looks a bit dazed for a moment, cradling the side of his face in his hand and breathing heavily, but it quickly passes. The second it does and he realizes who’s kneeling beside him, Luhan can see the shift in his demeanor.

A slap rings out, and now Luhan is cradling his face as well.

Between the two of them, it’s another twenty minutes before things are calmed down. Minseok makes chamomile tea and sits on the very edge of the bed, quilt wrapped protectively around his body. Luhan leans against the wall several feet away, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He opens his mouth, pauses, and snaps it shut again. The process repeats itself a few times as he tries to get his words in order, staring at the older boy in front of him.

Minseok’s hair is a bit longer, and it’s back to his natural black. He’s paler than he was when Luhan left, and thinner- Luhan’s stomach does a little flip at the sight of his bony wrists. There are dark circles etched under his eyes, though that might have a bit to do with the fact that Luhan has unceremoniously dropped in at close to one in the morning. From what he can discern from tabloid headlines, Minseok has been missing concerts here and there due to sickness. Sure enough, he looks worn out. Beyond that, the shadow of a bruise is forming under his left eye where ~~Luhan pushed him~~ he fell into a table earlier. Luhan feels like even more of an asshole than usual. Tonight was probably the boy’s only full twelve hours of respite in the last few weeks.

“So I had a few days off between shoots for the movie, and I figured I really wanted to see you…” Luhan starts. Minseok remains impassive. “You weren’t picking up your phone, and I was really confused, especially ‘cause it was your birthday a week ago. Happy Birthday, by the way,” he adds weakly. Minseok shoots him a withering look. “I couldn’t figure out what I had done to piss you off, and then Baekhyun finally sent me this really long, really angry text, and I guess you saw those pictures of me and my cast mate-“

“Kissing her,” Minseok interjects quietly. He’s staring down at the mug in his hands as though it could explain to him all the marvels of the world. Hell, it has a better shot at it than Luhan, right now.

“Just for the script! She’s my romantic interest in the movie, and she’s a friend, I guess- really, you’d love her if you met her-“ Minseok cringes at that and Luhan wants to take a very long knife and impale himself, because it has a better shot at eloquence than he does. “No, but we were just playing up the relationship for ratings. It was in the contract. Same with the interviews and those pictures. They’re staged, I promise! You knew that, anyways! We discussed it months ago.”

“Discussed” might be a stretch, Luhan will admit. Minseok had obviously been uncomfortable, but he’d only had five minutes to Skype before an interview, and Luhan had probably made it seem a bit less excessively gooey than the faux relationship had become. Once he had been wrangled into the kissing ‘candids’, he had been too afraid to bring it up. In hindsight, that just made things worse. Minseok had found out about it from the front page of a cheap magazine. That couldn’t have felt good.

“Anyways,” says Luhan, “I wanted to say that I’m really, really sorry about that, and also that you don’t have to worry. I don’t even like girls, you know. Anyways, it wouldn’t matter if I did. It was an asshole move not to give you forewarning, but I promise that it won’t happen again. If I have to promote more romance with her, I’ll tell you as soon as it happens so you don’t have to find out like that again. And anyways, you’re the only one for me.” Luhan’s face softens. “You should know that by now, Minnie. No one can ever be as great as you.”

There’s a moment of silence as Minseok keeps his head tilted down. Luhan waits for him to collect his words; his boyfriend usually takes his time to weigh them out like this. He feels confident that he’ll be forgiven, though. Minseok is insecure, but he trusts Luhan.

So Luhan is a bit shocked when Minseok finally looks up, because there are tears at the corners of his eyes. He looks like he’s been stepped on, crushed into a pulp. “Just, please go,” he chokes out. Luhan lets out a little gasp and springs forward to wrap his Minseok in a hug, but the smaller boy cringes away. His breaths come in little pained gusts as he attempts to control himself, to hold in the tears that are millimeters from the surface.

“I don’t understand,” Luhan says, hovering at the edge of the bed. “Why are you so upset?”

Minseok glares at him for that, drawing himself up rigidly. “How can you not know?” he exclaims. “Stop pretending!” Upon receiving a blank look, the older boy deflates. He reaches for his phone and unlocks it with trembling fingers, bringing up a photo and shoving it into Luhan’s hands.

On the screen is a grainy image of two boys in a dimly lit restaurant. They’re seated nearly in each other’s laps, leaned together. One’s hand is intertwined in the other’s hair as they kiss. Luhan’s stomach drops.

He didn’t know there were cameras in there.

Seeing the stunned look on Luhan’s face seems to be the final straw for Minseok. He stands on wobbly feet, covering his eyes with his elbow, and makes a dash for the door. Luhan lunges forward and grabs his wrist. “I can explain! No, it isn’t what it looks like! Please just hear me out!” he cries. Minseok doesn’t stop struggling. “I didn’t cheat on you, not really, I promise!”

“Shut up!” Minseok yells, tears finally cascading down his face. He stops struggling and more or less sinks onto the floor. Luhan feels like the biggest asshole alive- literally the single biggest pile of shit that has ever been mistakenly referred to as human in existence. He is pond scum.

“No,” he responds, “That picture is me kissing him, yeah, but it wasn’t like _that._ We were- it was so, so dumb, but all the cast mates were having lunch, and we’ve all gotten to be pretty close, filming for the last few months. We were playing spin the bottle. It’s super stupid, I know, but I got dared to. That guy is totally straight, anyways. He’s got a fiancée. We were just having a laugh about it. He practically died when it was over.” Minseok snorts, but it comes out more as a strangled noise through the tears and snot and sobs. “I promise!” Luhan exclaims. “I can show you other pictures. Look!” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and scrolls for a moment before handing it over. Minseok takes it and hesitantly flips through a few pictures.

They’re all of a bunch of different actors, kissing and then pulling grossed out faces. There’s one of Luhan with another girl, both looking pained. The one of him and the man pops up. Closer up, they’re both rolling their eyes. The next picture shows the other man making a sickened face. It’s obviously meant as a joke.

Minseok cries a bit harder, falling against Luhan’s side. “I’m sorry, I’m really, really, really sorry,”  Luhan whispers. His hand comes up to card through his Minseok’s hair. Everything is clear, now. Minseok sees a picture of his boyfriend kissing another man who is obviously not in his contract. With no explanation. Then his boyfriend drops in after midnight to make some kind of announcement or apology. That string of events could certainly be misinterpreted.

“I saw that picture on my birthday,” Minseok wails. “I woke up to it, and like a thousand texts from Lay cursing you out. God, you’re so fucking stupid. I think I hate you.”

Luhan kisses the top of his head. “I know, you should. That’s shitty. I’m shitty. On your birthday, too. Did you get the sunflowers I sent you?” Minseok hiccups and giggles sheepishly. “Yeah, but, uhh, I kind of threw them out. Well, I got really sad, and then Chanyeol chucked them out of the hotel twentieth story window.”

Luhan laughs at that and kisses the top of his head again. They’re sprawled across the hotel room carpet, Minseok curled up in his lap, slowly calming down. “That’s fine, babe. Good. Remind me to thank Chanyeol. I’ll buy you more. I meant to come to surprise you anyways, and take you out for dinner or something if you have any time.” “I think I have tomorrow night off,” Minseok replies. He tilts his head up to look his boyfriend in the eyes. “Sorry I assumed like that. You’ve never cheated before. I overreacted.”

Luhan feels a pang in his chest again. Minseok has always been this way, ever since he was a trainee for far too long with twice the talent of the rest of them. He dances the best, his voice is incredible, he’s so beautiful you can hardly look without feeling overwhelmed. Luhan can hardly stand to see new pictures of him, because without Luhan around, someone else might come along and swoop Minseok up. It wouldn’t be surprising; the boy has a tendency to make everyone within a ten mile radius fall in love with him.

Despite all that, he has the nerve to look guilty for all of this, as though a perfectly reasonable misunderstanding is _his_ fault. He doesn’t ever say it, never wants to fish for a compliment, but Luhan knows that Minseok has always doubted his own ability to get his boyfriend to stay with him, especially long distance. Minseok has been cheated on before; he explained it once, vaguely. How he’d walked in on his girlfriend at the time wrapped around another boy. He had walked straight out, pretended not to know and rationalized it in his head for weeks until he had a breakdown in the middle of the street and had to call her, then and there. He let her apologize, even stayed together for a few more weeks until she simply dumped him for the person she’d been messing around with all along. It wasn’t the only time he’d been with a rotten person. Minseok has a history with assholes, people that saw all his kindness as something to exploit, something to take and suck dry. It fills Luhan with rage. Luhan might be an asshole, a tiny bit, but he knows that his boyfriend deserves the world. Minseok is beautiful, and compassionate, and kind and funny and radiant. And he doesn’t get it, and he thinks that he deserves to be treated as less than such and it absolutely drives Luhan insane. He’s glad his boyfriend forgives him, but Minseok absolutely should not feel guilty. He’s the one who’s undoubtedly lost a week’s worth of sleep, who found out on his goddamn birthday that his newly long distance boyfriend had apparently cheated on him.

“Don’t be sorry,” Lay murmurs. “You should slap me again. It was a total joke, but I shouldn’t have done it anyways. I would have told you, if I thought you’d see, but it just didn’t seem important. Didn’t cross my mind. If you see something like that again, please just call me up and yell at me right there and then. But you won’t ever see something like that again, because I will never, ever betray you like that. I couldn’t. It’d just be an elaborate method of self-torture, because I know for a fact that I’ll never find anyone as great as you again.”

Minseok giggles and shoves at his shoulder, cheeks coloring. “Shut up, dork,” He says. His head falls back into Luhan’s chest and they both lay on the ground for a minute, absorbing the calm and becoming reacquainted with each other’s presence. It’s been too long, Luhan thinks.

A minute or two later, Minseok scrambles up. “This is disgusting!” he whines. “We’ve been laying on the hotel room floor! We have no clue whose feet have been there!”

Luhan laughs and scoops him up, earning a squeak from the smaller boy. “The bed it is,” He replies, flopping down onto the mattress. He nuzzles close to his Minseok’s neck. “You know,” he whispers, “We’re all alone in here, no one even knows I’m with you. I don’t know about you, but I’m wide awake after all that, and _god_ I’ve missed you.”

Minseok grins, batting his eyelashes. “How are you gonna make this up to me?” he asks. Luhan flips over and straddles him, leaning down for an open mouthed kiss. Minseok giggles into his mouth, reaching up to tug at his hair. “What, can’t handle how hot I look with red eyes and a runny nose, like I just got run over?”

“If you got run over, I wanna be the road,” Luhan says huskily, and Minseok outright laughs, loud and long, but Luhan attacks his mouth once more and it ebbs into a moan.

The next morning, when the boys come barging in because Management has a hefty bounty out for Luhan (dead or alive), the two are wrapped up together in bed, dead asleep. Minseok looks happier than he has all week, so they decide to let it slide until the older boy wakes up.

They’ll all skin Luhan alive later. For now, he’s apparently out of asshole mode and back to making Minseok unbelievably happy. Besides, they manage to snap a few pictures of the two drooling all over each other for blackmail.

Luhan is a little bit of an asshole sometimes, but he definitely loves his Minseok.

**Author's Note:**

> my babiesss. I included a lot of headcannons in this, such as:  
> 1) Luhan never calls Minseok Xiumin. He likes his birth name better  
> 2) He refers to him as 'his Minseok' a lot. bc hes a cute lil posessive bastard  
> 3) Xiumin is established bisexual; tryna stop just writing about homo/heterosexuality, and explore the spectrum more openly. As a bisexual girl, writing about gay men is probably less than completely candid.  
> 4) This is, quite pathetically, probably the steamiest thing I have ever written. I've never really done smut. If any of you ask for that, be prepared for a laugh. Just FYI.
> 
> It's 2 am and I should probably start my homework. As always, thanks if you've given this a read, comments are immensely appreciated!


End file.
